30 MAY 15, 19 7 osity. The free list amounts to $25,000 a year-a list made up mostly of mem- bers of the large, vague company known as "the press." "This thing is no fluke," Fischer often says thoughtfully. He thinks of himself as a child of destiny. Theo's contract to an American man- ager-the last he heard of her, she was in St. Louis, but that was circa 1904- Fischer became a vaudeville agent. He joined the forces of H. B. Marinelli, the greatest exporter of European talent. As Marinelli's representative, he brought over Polaire, the Ugliest Wom- an in the World; Alice Lloyd, the cock- ney comedienne; Harry Lauder, and Sarah Bernhardt. Working for Mari- nelli, Fischer learned the obvious les- son that visual entertainment was in- ternational: a freak, or a pantomimist, or an acrobat, was a sure bet anywhere. Marinelli himself had been a contortion- ist. Fischer spent part of his time in Europe looking for acts that would go in the United States, and part in New York selling the acts to theatre man- agers. The importation Fischer best likes to talk about was Machnow, the Rus- sian Giant. Machnow, Fischer says, was a mou jik nine feet two inches tall. Machnow was "a nice fellow, but a lit- tle bit dumb." During his New York engagement, Machnow and his wife lived on the roof of Willie Hammer- stein's Victoria Music Hall, at F orty- second Street and Seventh Avenue, where the Rialto Theatre stands now, because, Hammerstein's press agent re- ported, he couldn't find a hotel room in New York high enough to give him headroom. Machnow appealed to Fisch- er's flair for the grandiose. This Willie Hammerstein, who was one of Fischer's best customers, was at the same time his teacher. Willie's vaudeville profits financed Father Os- car's spectacular but ruinous venture into grand opera at the Manhattan Opera House. The shows that Ham- merstein fils put on at the Victoria were fast and tough and full of fakery. A Fischer discovery that pleased Ham- merstein mightily was Don, the talking dog. Don was performing in a street carnival in the town of Plauen, near Leipzig, when Fischer first saw him He was a large, plebeian beast. When his trainer shouted "J a!" Don barked so that one would swear he had said "J a" also. Part of the effect, Fischer says, was due to suggestion, and part to the peculiar sound of the German language. The high point of Don's per- formance was his pronunciation of the word "hunger" (in German fashion, like "hoonger"). Don wore a stiff leath- er collar, a kind of garrote. He would howl, "Hoo." Then the trainer would twist the collar suddenly, shutting off the dog's wind. The howl would end in a kind of gasp: "n-gah." "Hoo-n-gah" was the complete result. Another freak attraction Fischer im- ported for Hammerstein was Abdul Kader, the Man with Three Wives. Abdul Kader was a Swiss lightning art- ist-one of those old standbys of vaude- ville who drew pictures in colored chalk of Mount Vesuvius in eruption. He called himself a Turk, and travelled " h " h " f h " 1 - d WIt a arem 0 tree vel e women. One of them was his wife, the others were his daughters. While Fischer was on the Atlantic with Abdul Kader, Hammerstein's press agent was busy smoking out clergymen who liked pub- licity, asking them if they were going to permit a polygamist to enter the United States. There was a delegation of hell- fire shouters at the pier to stop Abdul Kader from landing. The immigration officers, who knew that Abdul Kader was as monogamous as any Methodist, kept their mouths shut and let ,events take their course. Hammerstein's man had given them all-year passes. Abdul Kader and his harem, with Fischer, climbed into an open carriage and .drove up Broadway to Hammerstein's while the thwarted ministers sent off red-hot messages to the administration, demanding the removal of the Commissioner of Immigration. Abdul Kader had a tremendous run. The Hammerstein faith in publicity crops up now and again in the French Casino shows. Fischer engaged Mme. Arlette Stavisky, the widow of the in- ternational swindler, for one F ISCHER made his début in show business as the manager of an eques- trienne turn, Mlle. Thea and Her Horse and Three Dogs. His boyhood, one gathers, was somewhat unsettled. His father had died while Fischer was small, and Clifford spent some time with paternal relatives in Germany, some at a kind of commercial boarding school in Brussels, and more with his mother and her family in northwest London. Clifford had been apprenticed to a Lon- don lithographer, but the music halls attracted him more strongly than his trade. He was accustomed to take his beer in a pub next to the Metropolitan, a small music hall on Edgeware Road, and there one day he met a chap who juggled cannon balls on his neck. The juggler was also Mlle. Theo's manager, but the two had had a romantic dis- agreement; so the juggler sold Fischer his interest in the act for f 1 0, which FIscher borrowed from his mother. That was in 1900, and Fischer brought the artiste, the horse, and the dogs to .tL\.merica in 1901. After selling Mlle. t :: . - --......-- '-- / - >0 -- / . -- lß / \i( .---=<l It 'drVQ)I- "I want it distinctly understood, Barbara May, that half of those coronation pictures are Alicza's."